Pac Mazda 6 SP Unveiled!

Here it is, the car that many believe will bring the rotary world record back to Australia and serve it up to the six-cylinder competition - the Pac Performance Mazda 6 SP.

Unveiled today at a ceremony held at Sydney Dragway, the Pac Performance Mazda 6 SP replaces both the recently retired and long-serving MX6 drag car and the team's previous Mazda 6 that was badly damaged in an accident just over a year ago.

At the unveiling, head tuner Rocky Rehayem indicated that the main goal for the new car is to take the competition to the Toyota and Nissan drivers in the Factory Xtreme bracket. "We've been to plenty of finals in the last few years but because we've had a performance deficit, they [the other drivers] know that they don't have to go very hard on the tree. With this car I want them to know that they have to be on their game whenever we're in the other lane."

The new car is a testament to Australian ingenuity with Turbosmart and Haltech again joining the Pac Performance engine combination.

The team's previous Mazda 6 earned the title of world's quickest and fastest rotary drag car - both marks that have since been bettered. Pac aims to be number one again with the new car.

With just hours before its unveiling, the crew were working hard to apply the finishing touches including applying the sponsor decals and gassing the shock absorbers.

But what of the talk of the world record that slipped through the team's grasp earlier this year? Driver of the Pac Performance Mazda 6 SP, George Rehayem, told Performance Garage that the team had made some changes to the performance of the Mazda 20B in order to step up to the tasks to come. "We've been working hard, all the boys have, to make sure that this car is built exactly the way we want it to be built. We'll be taking small steps until the car is behaving correctly to the 60ft and 330ft timers and from there we'll let it have fourth and fifth gear... and then what happens, happens," says George with a wry smile.

We asked George if the team had anything up their sleeves for their international competition. the reply? "Our sleeves are full!" Enough said.

The Mazda badge was one of the final pieces to make its home on the nose of the car.

The piston-powered competition comes in the form of the proven success of the 2JZ toyota Celica combinations of Harvey, Dyson and Signorelli, the latter holding the title as current sport compact drag racing world record holder. Signorelli told Performance Garage that, "We need more dedicated racers like the Pac guys that are prepared to go out and try to smash my record, the guys that want to go and give it everything. George, Rocky and the team are those kind of racers. They've built it to go fast and I'm sure it'll be a good thing. Me and the Pac boys have been at this since day one and every time they bring a car out it's awesome. It looks great and I'm sure it'll go fast."

Performance Garage caught up with George in the Pac Performance race shop in the lead-up to today's unveiling to see how preparations were coming along. See the video below for George's comments.